I just tested my Gear S2 3G as a running companion...some thoughts

icecreamw

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Oct 22, 2015
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The facts:
1. I ran 7.5 miles in 1 hour in a medium-sized American City
2. I used the Nike+ App
3. I played music stored on Gear S2 and used milk
4. I did not bring my phone
5. I brought a Garmin 305 for distance accuracy comparison

Bottom line: In my opinion, this thing is not a good running companion at all. I am very likely returning it.

What went wrong:
1. When trying to read the display during running (holding wrist to face), the screen blacks out after ~2-3sec, making navigation and manipulation nearly impossible. My guess is the gyroscope is not optimized for running. It probably things the tempo of your running is you dropping your wrist to your side. Big issue in my opinion. Why even include S-health?!?
2. The Audio cuts in and out periodically under all circumstances (streaming and storage music)
3. Nike+ will only play music on the storage and will not allow concurrent milk streaming
4. I turned milk on and left Nike+ in the background, as there was no way of running Milk in the background of Nike+. While playing Milk music, Nike+ kept recording for at least a mile, as I checked it to make sure, but at the end of the run, it erased my running data so I do not know if it was accurate. It must have stop recording at some point for some reason. I only know my distance b/c I brought my Garmin. Very disappointing.
5. I ran through around 50-55% of the battery in an hour running with location on and playing music
6. Milk periodically stopped playing for no real reason. Poor signal may be the culprit, but I am in a medium sized metro-area, so I doubt it. After 35 minutes it refused to open and had some error message I could not read. It became worthless.
7. Heart rate on demand did not work
8. It runs sluggishly when playing music and tracking running.

What went right:
1. It lasted for 1 hour without losing all battery.
2. It still told the time and battery %

I'm not happy with this at all. Samsung highlights this partially as a health watch, but it does a poor job at functioning as a below-average health watch. I'm going to try it again tomorrow with the S-health running feature and hopefully I'll have more success.
 

haus

Well-known member
Feb 5, 2011
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That's really interesting. If you try it again, try loading your music onto the watch and not streaming over the network the whole time. That's essentially the equivalent of being on a phone call the entire time, which would definitely run down a watch battery.

Can't speak to the other points but awaiting more info from others. Particularly disappointed in the distance tracking; that's awful on the Gear 2 and I was hoping it would be better on the S2 (Gear 2 massively underestimates the distance).
 

nickdeck

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Oct 9, 2010
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I would've suggested the "I am Alive" app to keep the watch face on while you're running, but it sounds like battery life is already iffy enough.
 

icecreamw

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Oct 22, 2015
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That's really interesting. If you try it again, try loading your music onto the watch and not streaming over the network the whole time. That's essentially the equivalent of being on a phone call the entire time, which would definitely run down a watch battery.

Can't speak to the other points but awaiting more info from others. Particularly disappointed in the distance tracking; that's awful on the Gear 2 and I was hoping it would be better on the S2 (Gear 2 massively underestimates the distance).

I'll try it again. Thus far it is incapable of measuring a complete workout, so the Gear 2 already has the advantage.
 

icecreamw

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Oct 22, 2015
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As a follow-up, S health actually registered 56 minutes of my 1 hour run. It says I ran 6.69 miles in 56 minutes. Compared to 60 minutes and 7.54 miles, the disparity is a bit alarming. I ran at an 8 minute pace, so if it did track the final 4 minutes it would indicate 7.21 miles. However, maybe it's counting something else as "running". The lesson here I suppose is Nike+ is garbage and I'm sticking to the S health, as it's already running no matter what. Tomorrow's run will be posted tomorrow afternoon
 

FitzAusTex

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Oct 28, 2010
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As a follow-up, S health actually registered 56 minutes of my 1 hour run. It says I ran 6.69 miles in 56 minutes. Compared to 60 minutes and 7.54 miles, the disparity is a bit alarming. I ran at an 8 minute pace, so if it did track the final 4 minutes it would indicate 7.21 miles. However, maybe it's counting something else as "running". The lesson here I suppose is Nike+ is garbage and I'm sticking to the S health, as it's already running no matter what. Tomorrow's run will be posted tomorrow afternoon
I may be wrong, but it is probably a good idea to kick off the running app in S Health on the S2 at the start of your run. Since you were using Nike, it may be that since you didn't kick off S Health, it took the S2 a few minutes to realize you were actually running. Not bad since it had to figure that out.
 

supersoulfly

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Dec 21, 2010
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As a follow-up, S health actually registered 56 minutes of my 1 hour run. It says I ran 6.69 miles in 56 minutes. Compared to 60 minutes and 7.54 miles, the disparity is a bit alarming. I ran at an 8 minute pace, so if it did track the final 4 minutes it would indicate 7.21 miles. However, maybe it's counting something else as "running". The lesson here I suppose is Nike+ is garbage and I'm sticking to the S health, as it's already running no matter what. Tomorrow's run will be posted tomorrow afternoon


Why did it only register 56 minutes of the 1 hour run? Did you just use the automatic tracking? It gives a lot more options and info if you manually start a run exercise. I have a widget set up for my daily walks that I use. Found it to be pretty comprehensive, some accuracy issues though (average speed doesn't match up with distance and time from what I've seen).

Here's screenshots of one of my walks showing the interface on watch, the log, and info stored on the phone.
http://s13.postimg.org/sk005u90n/Final.jpg
 

jrsharp70

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Aug 24, 2012
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As a follow-up, S health actually registered 56 minutes of my 1 hour run. It says I ran 6.69 miles in 56 minutes. Compared to 60 minutes and 7.54 miles, the disparity is a bit alarming. I ran at an 8 minute pace, so if it did track the final 4 minutes it would indicate 7.21 miles. However, maybe it's counting something else as "running". The lesson here I suppose is Nike+ is garbage and I'm sticking to the S health, as it's already running no matter what. Tomorrow's run will be posted tomorrow afternoon

1. It's been my experience on the original gear s that s health is way better than Nike.
2. 50% drain in one hour with GPS and Bluetooth music on the original gear would be better than average.
3. How was the heart rate?
4. How was the GPS? Anywhere but a main city Street on the original gear s I could never get a GPS lock
5. You were streaming without a phone on 3g... I'd never even try that on the original gear. The battery would be dead in an hour and a half.
Posted via the Android Central App
 

icecreamw

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Oct 22, 2015
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Why did it only register 56 minutes of the 1 hour run? Did you just use the automatic tracking? It gives a lot more options and info if you manually start a run exercise. I have a widget set up for my daily walks that I use. Found it to be pretty comprehensive, some accuracy issues though (average speed doesn't match up with distance and time from what I've seen).

Here's screenshots of one of my walks showing the interface on watch, the log, and info stored on the phone.
http://s13.postimg.org/sk005u90n/Final.jpg

Thanks. I am only going to be running with the watch though. Is that what you did?

I will do a manual start tomorrow on S health
 

icecreamw

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Oct 22, 2015
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1. It's been my experience on the original gear s that s health is way better than Nike.
2. 50% drain in one hour with GPS and Bluetooth music on the original gear would be better than average.
3. How was the heart rate?
4. How was the GPS? Anywhere but a main city Street on the original gear s I could never get a GPS lock
5. You were streaming without a phone on 3g... I'd never even try that on the original gear. The battery would be dead in an hour and a half.
Posted via the Android Central App

as far as I can tell, heart rate never registered. I tried manually once and it failed. It didn't take any random measurements during that time. Maybe Nike+ was overriding it?
 

icecreamw

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Oct 22, 2015
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I may be wrong, but it is probably a good idea to kick off the running app in S Health on the S2 at the start of your run. Since you were using Nike, it may be that since you didn't kick off S Health, it took the S2 a few minutes to realize you were actually running. Not bad since it had to figure that out.
seems possible. I'll try without nike tomorrow
 

jrsharp70

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Aug 24, 2012
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as far as I can tell, heart rate never registered. I tried manually once and it failed. It didn't take any random measurements during that time. Maybe Nike+ was overriding it?

S health measures hr before and during the run. First it locates GPS (if stand alone) then hr, then counts down 3 servings and stays the run. The bad part? No freaking auto pause when you stop at a traffic light or something. It's always something.

I'll have my gear s2 by Saturday when my gear s sells on eBay.

Posted via the Android Central App
 

haus

Well-known member
Feb 5, 2011
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As a follow-up, S health actually registered 56 minutes of my 1 hour run. It says I ran 6.69 miles in 56 minutes. Compared to 60 minutes and 7.54 miles, the disparity is a bit alarming. I ran at an 8 minute pace, so if it did track the final 4 minutes it would indicate 7.21 miles.

That's not too far off (7.21 vs 7.54). After I raced a 5K a couple weeks ago my Gear 2 said I ran 2.29 miles. LOL. Looking forward to your next try & information.
 

thestellarinc

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Jan 29, 2013
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I ran with the gear s alot and it's pretty similar.
S health works much better and will run in the back ground.
GPS can sometimes take a while to lock on before the run due to needing to use the cell tower triangulation. Once it locks on though it was always accurate.
Milk music doesn't work well at all. I think this is because 3g just isn't good enough to stream music. They need to come out with a 4G watch. I resorted to always using loaded mp3s.

Due to milk not working on 3g and the GPS taking too long to lock sometimes, I opted away from the 3g model for the S2.
 

milkb0x

Member
Jul 10, 2012
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i've actually been using the stand alone s2 model and haven't really had any crucial problems that would make me not want this as a watch for running. First since I figured spotify any other music app would take forever to come to the s2, i knew i would have my phone on my anyway when i run so i didn't need to have the 3g version. I use spotify as my main music source and just like the nike+ phone app I have to first launch spotify on my phone then begin my run since there is no integration. The only problem I have which i did ask (which no one had a solution for in regards for locking on for gps but i did figure out a way) is that since it's the stand alone model it takes maybe at most 30 secs (sometimes i can lock on immedietly) to obtain the GPS from the phone to the watch. I've been taking the watch with me for every run for the past 2 weeks at 10 miles a day, and it seem accurate where I will see mile markers then check the watch and it's either on the dot or near. Heart rate seems to update pretty well too and I haven't had an issue with that. Im not sure though maybe with the 3g model, and i did see a review on for the gear s, it's best before you run to restart the watch completely so it's fresh, and that reviewer never had problems with freezing or crashing. But as of the s2, it's pretty solid as a running watch
 

icecreamw

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Oct 22, 2015
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So I tested it with s-health. I ran for 15 minutes and the Gear S2 registered 1.56 miles and the Garmin registered 1.59 miles. Pretty good.

I should mention I ran in an open field with multiple visible cell towers.

The music played off of my watch with zero skipping or interruption. I did not have my phone on.

The heart rate monitor was not accurate at all. It had my max at 220 which is not even physically possible at the pace I was running. I looked at it a few times and my HR was way above the true number (showed like 170+ and it was really ~140). The HR monitor is essentially worthless while running thus far.

The general response of the watch is overall sluggish for my taste. Slow to respond to swipes and doesn't illuminate as quickly as I'd like.

The heart rate monitor is a deal breaker for me. I need something at least in the correct ballpark. Pair that drawback with the fact that there are no good apps for the watch and it really doesn't do much more than serve as a phone hands free that shows only some of my notifications (google maps would be nice), I'm calling Verizon today and returning it.

Hopefully you have better luck than me and hopefully Samsung can make some improvements soon. I'm looking closely at the Moto 360 sport, but waiting for the reviews to stream in before I buy it this time.

Good luck with your watches.
 

SMD

Well-known member
Mar 23, 2011
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Maybe look into the upcoming (this month) Urbane 2nd Edition LTE.

That 4G might be good for what you're experiencing and maybe Android Wear will "get it right" when it comes to delivering on their health tracking ecosystem. It's funny because I was dead set on this watch until this week reading all these reviews from you guys. While I realize most satisfied users don't come to forums probably, and I'm not really even a runner, I just get the sense that just HAVING features doesn't mean they're gonna work well in practice.
 

icecreamw

Active member
Oct 22, 2015
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Maybe look into the upcoming (this month) Urbane 2nd Edition LTE.

That 4G might be good for what you're experiencing and maybe Android Wear will "get it right" when it comes to delivering on their health tracking ecosystem. It's funny because I was dead set on this watch until this week reading all these reviews from you guys. While I realize most satisfied users don't come to forums probably, and I'm not really even a runner, I just get the sense that just HAVING features doesn't mean they're gonna work well in practice.

Thanks I'll check it out. I hear the heart rate monitor on that watch is not very accurate. But perhaps I'm asking for too much in regards to heart rate and smartwatches.
 

tstreete

Well-known member
Oct 15, 2015
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Gear s2 classic works great for exercise for me

Just to offer another perspective, I've been exercising with my Gear S2 classic for several weeks now, and really like it. My routines are modest: mostly I use an elliptical trainer at the gym or go for ~2 hour/25 mile bike rides. (I'm 60.) I've replaced the leather watch strap with a metal one. In the gym, I don't need the phone, and can manually stop and start S Health while listening to podcasts stored on the watch. On the bike, I leave my phone in a handlebar bag while using S Health to track heart rate and distance/speed. (I've sometimes used Komoot for guidance, too; it has good data on bike paths, and getting directions from a watch while biking -- just a quick glance at your wrist -- is much better than trying to keep an eye on a smartphone, imho.)

Once, the heart rate monitor was giving improbably high readings, so I took off the watch and wiped the back on my shirt, and things returned to where they should be. I guess you need to keep it reasonably clean. In general, the heart rate monitoring has been very consistent (though I imagine a chest strap would be more precise.) The step monitoring has also been consistent, though I have nothing to compare it to for overall accuracy (and that's not a measure that matters much to me.)

So I don't imagine it's as good as some of the high end devices designed mostly for working out, but I don't mind carrying my phone when I need the gps, and for my purposes it's been great.
 

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